This is just insane. The FBI and Department of Justice has been fighting tooth and nail to not tell Congress the identity of the informant they used to gather intelligence on the Trump campaign. And their allies in Congress and elsewhere have chimed in with all manner of ridiculous and bullsh** threats directed at Devin Nunes…though not at Trey Gowdy who is working with Nunes to identify this FBI source. A reflexively leftwing law professor (but I repeat myself) made this astonishing statement tonight:

Just a friendly note to remind you that leaking the identity of an FBI informant in the context of a foreign counterintelligence investigation is a felony in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982:https://t.co/Ohppx9jBLKpic.twitter.com/kludMTWVED

This is just stupid. The law clearly defines who it covers as employees of an intelligence agency. This does not cover informants or sources and intelligence agencies are forbidden by law from collecting information on US persons. And the very idea that the Department of Justice is going to okay a grand jury investigation and indictment of a member of Congress when the FBI has leaked the same information to multiple media outlets is simply insane.

The ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee made a similar threat today:
. . .
Today, the FBI and Justice go back the the leak well and give us enough information that we can say pretty conclusively that Halper is the man. Secret FBI source for Russia investigation met with three Trump advisers during campaign.
. . .
Here the FBI claims that they are trying to protect this guy’s identity but they give it to the Washington Post who then calls people to ask them about their contacts with the source.
. . .
The identity of the informant could not be more clear. And the identification didn’t come from a leak by Congress, it came from multiple leaks by the FBI and DOJ who are burning Halper to the ground for their own reasons And I think those reasons will be come abundantly clear as the DOJ IG finishes up his investigations.

Four decades ago, Halper was responsible for a long-forgotten spying scandal involving the 1980 election, in which the Reagan campaign – using CIA officials managed by Halper, reportedly under the direction of former CIA Director and then-Vice-Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush – got caught running a spying operation from inside the Carter administration. The plot involved CIA operatives passing classified information about Carter’s foreign policy to Reagan campaign officials in order to ensure the Reagan campaign knew of any foreign policy decisions that Carter was considering.

Hmm?… Methinks Senator Mark Warner has a conflict here. You see, when Dianne Feinstein stepped down as Vice-Chair from the Senate Intel Committee after the 2016 election, it was Mark Warner who took her place. This puts Warner on the Gang-of-Eight. Coincidentally, the Gang-of-Eight conduct all oversight over DOJ and FBI covert and counterintelligence operations…. including those covert actions that took place in 2016. But wait, it gets better….

Senator Mark Warner was also the guy caught text messaging with DC Lawyer Adam Waldman in the spring of 2017 (his first assignment). Waldman was the lawyer for the interests of Christopher Steele – the author of the dossier. While he was working as an intermediary putting Senator Warner and Christopher Steele in contact with each-other. Simultaneously Adam Waldman was also representing the interests of… wait for it,…. Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

Derispaska was the Russian person approached by Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok and asked to assist in creating dirt on the Trump campaign, via Paul Manafort.

You see, Senator Mark Warner has a vested interest in making sure that no-one ever gets to the bottom of the 2016 political weaponization, spying and surveillance operation.

Thus, the rolling out of the IG Report may be a study in parenting-as-politics. Swift justice is a Good Thing. But in politics, especially at the national level, swift justice would have permitted Her Majesty and the Thralls to make the discussion about Vengeful McHitlerTrump, and not about the fact that the Left had tried to run the country like a banana republic.

There are two things Trump needs to do as soon as special counsel Mueller turns in his report to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, according to Levin.

He called on President Trump to appoint a special counsel to investigate the alleged interference in the election by the CIA, FBI, and the Obama administration’s top intelligence officials. He also said that Trump should appoint a commission to reform the government to prevent this from happening to any future president of the United States.

Attorneys for Michael Cohen are asking a federal judge to block adult-film star Stormy Daniels's attorney Michael Avenatti from a case involving an FBI raid of Cohen's home and office last month. In court papers filed on Friday, Cohen's attorneys accused Avenatti of creating a "carnival atmosphere" in legal proceedings involving Cohen, pointing to his numerous television appearances in recent months.

"Mr. Avenatti’s deliberate public dissemination of confidential nonpublic information speaks to his character and lack of fitness to appear before this Court — as well as his craving to create a 'carnival atmosphere,' " the filing reads. "Mr. Avenatti has appeared on national television and made statements regarding Mr. Cohen 147 times over the past ten weeks, and many of these statements concerned nonpublic information and misrepresentations regarding Mr. Cohen," it continues.

Cohen's lawyers argue that Avenatti is "primarily focused on smearing Mr. Cohen publicly in his efforts to further his own interest in garnering as much media attention as possible.